Renegade:- Amstrad CPC

Hello all my Retro bad asses! Welcome to another Monday update. Todays review goes out to the lovely Amstrad CPC and I have selected….

Renegade on the 464 model

I always wanted an Amstrad, but had a Spectrum, some games the Spectrum did a number on the Amstrad, but other times the Amstrad took a leak over the Spectrum, not often, but it did. I guess the ability to have multiple colours on screen at once helped this, and boy did it have some pretty loading screens. Renegade is no exception to this rule, as you can see above, it delivered on that score.

So, you play the title character of the Renegade, who must street fight his way to save his girl from nasty gang members, as is always the way eh? From that lovely title screen comes a rather bland grey screen with very little on show apart from a sprite of your character, this gives nothing away…nothing.

Upon starting the game however, we are greeted with a lovely colour filled gaming arena, sprites fill the screen ( number wise, not height wise ) and are all decked out in various coloured gear. Your character is visibly different from the rest of the enemy sprites so it’s not hard to get lost on the screen.

So you have your basic directional movements, a punch and a rear kick and also a flying kick you can perform. If you have played Target Renegade this plays very similar to that game, as it should as this is the prequel. Enemies come at you from front and back so you can never stay in one place too long or you will find yourself getting hammered, you can be grabbed to stop you moving but can still have the ability to kick to the front or behind to disengage the person holding you. Once an opponent is downed, you can leap on him and do some extra damage from above.

I quite enjoyed this game, the quality is pretty good for the old Amstrad, smooth movements and nice screen to screen transition, a pretty nice little Arcade conversion. If there was one gripe, sometimes it’s hard to get into a position where you are not getting ganked from both sides leading into a beat down and lost life.

Graphics:- Nice and colourful for the Amstrad, bold colours and nice looking sprites. Animations are very nice too with good swinging punches and swift kicks rolls this into a nice beat em’ up.

Sound:- The music score is very nice and blends in very nicely to the gaming experience, never gets annoying, just playing to itself in the background. Event sounds are ok, but to be honest, it’s a fighting game, you don’t need much sound in one of these types of game. It suffices, and does it’s job, but the music is superb.

Overall:- A nice little game that brings out the street fighter in you, 5 levels of smashing up the bad guys and reclaiming your girl. For an Amstrad title, this provides a good deal of fun, which at the end of the day, is what it’s all about!